The young man stared down at the small book, his middle and index fingers pressed down to keep the pages from turning as a breeze wafted over him. It was a strange book full of nature scenes and Japanese people in studied poses. But, what really caught his attention was the bare-skinned, almost European looking woman peeking out at him from a curtain. Her gaze seemed to pierce him and he almost felt that he could reach in and pull her out of the page.
"Hello." He blinked. The woman on the page spoke again, smiling at him. "Hello there."...
"Do you believe in ghosts?" he asked
"No I don't." she replied
"You're about to."
The doors opened wide with their bottoms scrapping across the wooden panelled floor. The light shone out in a thing line and then a bigger line and then a rectangle and then eclipsed the entire room in thick white light.
She turned to him with fear in her eyes. She was quaking in her little boots, her little hands started shaking too, she searched for comfort. He held out his hand.
"All good things" he started, require a leap of faith..."
She looked him in...
The trick was picking the tired, lost ones. That was the trick. Many passengers coming into Warsaw Airport had been warned about 'unlicensed' taxis, but if you chose well they would be too confused to argue. The trick was getting their bag. Once you had that, with a "Let me carry your bag, Sir/Madam," they would have to follow you.
The trick was to walk fast enough to scare them into following you, for fear of losing their baggage in the busy arrivals lounge, but not so fast the airport police would think you were stealing something.
That was the...
Mike had been walking for hours. Flamin' car. He knew he shouldn't have bought that old banger from Rob. The heat was belting down; it must have been at least 25 celsius. 'Hey, that's hot in Newcastle', he could hear himself saying defensively to Rob who always took holidays in Tunisia and Morocco.
The tarmac was beginning to soften and the collar on his shirt was chafing. No way he'd make that interview now. His first chance to get up the ladder in years, he'd been picturing telling Rob for ages, and now he'd blown it. Or, rather, the car...
"Sam!" the guy shouted. "This is it!"
Sam followed, but he wasn't sure this WAS it. How could it be? They'd been waiting for this for hours, for days even. How could it be?
"Get the nebulizer," he said. "And be quick."
Sam could never remember what the nebulizer was or what it was for. He didn't think it had anything to do with the surrender, but he didn't really know and so didn't like to say.
"Got it," he said, handing a doohicky over to the ambulance driver.
"Thanks, man," he said, not even looking. The guy was intent...
When I lost my mother in the store, I was only three years old. I can't remember what happened but I still wake up in a sweat most nights, an innate sense of abandonment, as though I have been on a mission to the moon, stepped outside the spaceship for a walk across the lunar landscape and left behind. Terror.
Mother never recovered from her fear. She spent the rest of my childhood in a daze from a mix of prescription pill cocktails, agrophobia and alcohol. Dangerous combinations.
She was currently in a secure medical facility, unrecognisable from the pretty...
If we never speak again, there will be so many things I've never said. There will be no record of the thoughts that have been chasing each other around in my head. There will be no reason to remember me. You will never know the truth about what could have been - what I wanted us to be. I will never get to make you understand. If we never speak again...
"Wait!"
I could feel their glares. They loved to do this. I kept tripping over branches and I could feel the cuts on my arms.
They would save me eventually and they would take me home and I would tell mother what they had done. She would tell them to go home and tell brother to go to his room, there would be no dinner for him and I would get sad because I felt trapped. I felt wronged and needed my mother's comfort, but I knew that my tattle-taling would only result in spite from them the next time we...
Massachusetts was beautiful; I was 5 years old, and it was summer. I collected wishbones, crab skeletons, a jellyfish in my shoe. I swam, played, and had the time of my life.
In 1991, at 4 years old, the carousel in Martha's Vineyard was my favorite place to be in the whole world. My dad let me ride it for what seemed to be 100 rides. The horses had those horns on the top that made them look like Unicorns. There was a game involved; the object, to collect a brass ring and place it atop your horse. I won....
One scoop chocolate, one scoop strawberry.
One scoop soil, one scoop blood.
One scoop of fear, one scoop of daring.
One scoop of regret, one scoop of happiness.
One scoop flesh, one scoop breath.
One scoop breath...
One scoop breath...
One scoop breath...
For more than one scoop blood